By Ryan Spoon
On Friday, October 10, 2025, in the wake of the announcement of the historic Israel-Hamas peace deal, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth held a joint news conference with Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. In recognition of Qatar’s major role in helping to close this peace deal, “Today, we’re announcing a letter of acceptance in building a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho,” Hegseth said. This aircraft and training deal had been in the works for several years, so based on the timing of this announcement only two days after concluding the Israel-Hamas peace accords, it seems very likely that closing this aircraft and training deal was being held over the Qatari’s heads as a condition for them helping to close the Israel-Hamas deal.
The reactions from across the political sphere, especially the conservative political world in Idaho, were swift and loud! You can read some of those reactions here, including mine: https://gemstatechronicle.com/2025/10/news-idahoans-react-to-qatari-air-force-deal/. My reaction boiled down to “so what, we’ve been doing this with dozens of other countries for years, why the outrage now?” The reactions of others, like Senator Brian Lenney of Nampa, began with some outrage based on misinformation (“a Qatari air force facility” was poor wording by Hegseth), but then he transitioned to “this is about domestic subversion and the establishment wants you to think this is perfectly normal.” He also said in that same post, “So if we’ve done something before, it’s automatically justified to keep doing it?” These are fair points, and I’ll let you all decide if we should be training 1) ANY foreign country’s military in the U.S. or 2) any foreign Muslim-majority country’s military in the U.S. I have the very deepest respect for Senator Lenney, and I think that he has some legitimate concerns here. I think that he’s one of the most conservative legislators in the entire Idaho Legislature, and he’s also the closest to my own political views on nearly every issue, which is why I feel comfortable juxtaposing his views with mine. In the end, though, on this issue, I simply disagree as to where we should end up with both our initial reactions and our eventual conclusions.
I want to talk primarily about the OUTRAGE, though. Why is this such a big deal now? Has this been an issue that people have always been this passionate about? Is it rooted in their deeply held principles and beliefs? Or is this an emotional decision based on lack of information and historical perspective? I would humbly argue that the OUTRAGE is due to lack of information and historical perspective.
First of all, Qatar is NOT building a “Qatari Air Force base” in Idaho or anywhere else in America. In 2017, during the first Trump administration, Qatar finalized a $12 billion deal with the U.S. to purchase 36 Boeing-made F-15QA fighter jets, the “QA” being that they are downgraded to lesser specifications that the U.S. allows for the country of Qatar. We have similar arrangements with nearly every country that buys our military aircraft: no one gets a product that’s quite as good as what our military gets. This order, with the first aircraft scheduled to be delivered in 2021, included an agreement for training for Qatari pilots. In order to conduct this training, Qatar is footing the bill to build hangars on Mountain Home Air Force Base to house these aircraft, and they are also paying to build dorms on this US-owned, US-controlled base to house their student pilots. The U.S. retains full ownership and control of the base and these new structures on the base. This is routine and normal when foreign countries buy weapons systems as expensive and complex as fighter jets. When a country buys fighter jets from the US, it comes with a lot more than a receipt, an instruction manual, and a “have a nice day.” The U.S. has trained and continues to train dozens of countries that have bought our aircraft, such as Great Britain, Singapore, Germany, the Netherlands, Muslim-majority Turkey, Italy, Muslim-majority Saudi Arabia, and many others. The Singaporean training detachment is already hosted on Mountain Home Air Force Base and trains alongside U.S. pilots on the F-15, just like the Dutch are trained on the F-35 at Luke Air Force Base, AZ.
Second, “soft power” is a legitimate and effective form of military power. Soft power includes actions like including a foreign military in our training exercises, such as the U.S. does with allies around the world. It also includes Qatar hosting our military base in their country. Did you know that we have military bases in Qatar? This fake news that Americans are outraged about, a foreign base on U.S. soil, is actually something that Qatar has already done for the U.S. since 1991! The U.S. has two major bases on Qatari soil, including the largest U.S. base in the Middle East. These kinds of parternships draw them further into our sphere of influence and away from countries like China, Iran, and Russia. I’d definitely prefer that we lived in a world where neither the US nor Qatar needed to have much to do with each other, but in the meantime, in a world where Qatar hosts the largest US base in the Middle East and where we train student pilots from dozens of other countries, letting Qatari pilots train here seems reasonable.
Third, Qatar has stuck their neck out for us in real and tangible ways in recent years. They have been the primary intermediary bringing Hamas to the negotiating table in the recent Israel-Hamas peace accords. Do you think that radical Islamists are feeling good about the Qatari government for facilitating peace with the hated Jews and the equally-hated “Great Satan” (aka, America)? A few months back, when the U.S. bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, Iran retaliated with some relatively ineffective rocket attacks at one of the U.S. bases in Qatar. Some of the rockets hit the U.S. base and others hit outside the base, but it’s all Qatari soil. Suppose that Qatar really was establishing a base in the U.S. and then a foreign country bombed it. Would you shrug your shoulders and say “so what,” or would you be outraged about an attack on American soil? I know that I’d be outraged about an attack on American soil. On our orders, the Qataris took no revenge against the Iranians, because we were trying to defuse the situation. Do you think we could have made ourselves do the same? Not likely! More recently, Israel bombed a building in Qatar believed to house Hamas leaders. Same thing, if you’re Qatari, do you care who they were trying to take out? No, you’re outraged about an attack on Qatari soil. Again, on our orders, to preserve the ongoing peace process, Qatar took no revenge. I’m not saying that they’re the good guys, but they could be doing a lot worse.
Fourth, while I agree that “because that’s the way we’ve always done it” is not a good reason, it should factor into the level of our outrage. For example, I’m outraged about the wasteful Social Security and Medicare programs, and I’m disgusted that my Generation X will pay our entire lives for benefits that we are unlikely to ever receive. However, I’m not going to make every discussion about that, and I’m not going to lose my temper on a daily basis over programs that have been festering and growing since before my now-deceased grandparents were even born. When I was at West Point from 1994-1998 and in U.S. Army helicopter flight school in 1998-1999, we had exchange cadets and exchange officers from many countries in our training programs, including Muslim-majority countries like Saudi Arabia. It is not lost on me that I had Saudi exchange officers in my flight school classes in Fort Rucker, AL, and every one of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. As noted above, our base in Qatar has been there since 1991. This aircraft sale and training agreement dates back to at least 2017. This is not new, it’s not unusual, and it’s not reasonable to express this level of outrage over a longstanding practice. Maybe we need to talk about changes, but new and sudden white-hot outrage over a decades-long practice? I’m sorry, but that’s not reasonable.
Lastly and MOST IMPORTANTLY, this arrangement where we train Qatari pilots in the U.S. is better for us than training over there, because it leaves us in the driver’s seat. They incur all of the costs of improving our bases and transporting their personnel and equipment over here. If the Qataris betray us, we can cancel the arrangement and keep the hardware. Or, if their betrayal is egregious enough, we can keep their pilots as POWs and still keep the hardware as well. That’s much better than evacuating our people from Qatar in a panic and leaving behind our hardware as we did in Afghanistan. We were there in Afghanistan in a training capacity before the Taliban suddenly took over, and I don’t want to ever see that incident repeated.
BOTTOM LINE: This latest outrage is much ado about nothing, and it’s based primarily on lack of information, misinformation, and lack of historical perspective
About Ryan Spoon
Ryan Spoon graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1998 and served as an active-duty Army officer. He now works in fire protection engineering consulting. He is the former Chairman of the Idaho Freedom Political Action Committee (PAC) and the current First Vice Chairman of the Ada County Republican Party Central Committee (Ada County GOP).
